Pill testing and supervised injecting rooms. Gabrielle‘s speech to parliament, full transcript:
The evidence has been long, loud and clear. Pill testing saves lives. When people use pill-testing services, they are less likely to take drugs containing dangerous substances, they are more likely to take a reduced dose and they are less likely to be at risk of overdose if they do take drugs.
I want to acknowledge the years of advocacy from the community, from the harm reduction sector, from people who use drugs, from the friends and family of those who have died from overdose, from the health professionals and from the progressive crossbench and the Greens.
At long last this historic co-sponsored bill from the Greens, Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice will mean that Victoria will have pill testing at music festivals across the state as well as at a fixed site in the city. Covered by legal protections, participants will be able to share a sample of their drugs for testing and receive back information on the composition of the drugs and any potential impacts. They will then be able to make an informed decision to either keep their drugs or safely dispose of them. If participants do decide to take the drugs and keep them, workers trained in harm reduction will be able to provide information on how to make drug taking safer.
The drug-testing results will also inform the surveillance of the illegal drug market and will enable public alerts to be issued.
We are thrilled with this bill. We are also thrilled that naloxone vending machines will be introduced by this bill. Naloxone is a fast-acting, easy-to-administer safe medication that reverses opioid overdoses.
This bill is welcome and necessary, and it signals a really significant shift in the political approach towards drugs and harm reduction.
But it is also bittersweet because at the same time as agreeing to support this bill, the government has also walked back a critical harm reduction initiative to open more medically supervised injecting rooms. Last year over 547 Victorians suffered from a fatal opioid overdose. 2022 and 2023 recorded the highest number of fatalities ever on record in this state. With the possible introduction of potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl and nitazenes into the illicit drug market, that risk becomes even more acute. Given these stats and given that the City of Melbourne has the highest number of heroin deaths out of any Victorian local government area, it is devastating that the Labor government has abandoned its promise to open a medically supervised injecting facility in the CBD.
The advocates and the experts that have been pushing for pill testing and widespread naloxone access know that both measures save lives. Those same advocates and experts have been pushing for more supervised injecting rooms, and they will continue to push for that because medically supervised injecting rooms also save lives.
In my electorate in North Richmond we know the impact that a supervised injecting room can have. In just a few years over 9115 overdoses have been successfully managed, over 3800 referrals to health and social services have been made, over 1000 people have been put on opioid pharmacotherapy and over 2000 people have been tested for hepatitis and other bloodborne diseases, almost 400 of whom have started hepatitis C treatment. This is thanks to the incredible work of the North Richmond Community Health centre and their dedicated team of staff offering support and saving and changing lives.
I commend this bill but warn that pill testing and naloxone do not remove the need for more medically supervised injecting facilities.
